Studied us? Studied US?
He tried to think, but he was too tired. It was good just to lie quietly, listening to the wind and the sounds of the coming night. He slept.
It was morning when he opened his eyes again—a bright clear morning that hurt his eyes. And the morning was filled with sound—a thundering, splitting crack that swept down from the skies and reverberated through the hard-packed village streets. He caught a glimpse of it, silver in the sun, flashing high above the trees in a deceleration orbit.
A spaceship.
And a big one.
The ship stood on her tail and came down. Martin Ashley watched it lose altitude, hanging in the air like a skilled swimmer treading water, until the tall pinelike trees hid it from view.
A whining hum continued for a long minute, and then the silence came again, even louder in his ears. The world rushed in to fill the emptiness, with whispers of wind and trickles of water rushing over rocks and murmurs of village life.
The ship had landed—obviously out in the grass field, near the empty shuttle from the Juarez.
Rondol helped Ashley to his feet, and kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Catan himself, the “chief” of the Nern, assisted Bob Chavez. A girl, whose name was Lirad, led the way out of the village and down the pathway under the trees.
Still a little confused and uncertain about what was happening, Martin Ashley turned once, back to the village of the Nern, to bid it a silent farewell. At his side, Rondol seemed about to speak, but said nothing.
Unbelievably, they were leaving. Going where?
They walked along under the pines until the forest ended and the field of tall grass was before them. There in the sun rested the mighty spaceship that he had seen as a silver speck in the air, and beyond it lay the shuttle that had carried them to Carinae IV. The shuttle was dwarfed into insignificance by the towering giant that dominated the field.
The three Nern eyed the great ship neither with envy nor curiosity. Ashley watched them closely. There was, he decided, a certain affection in their eyes, but that was all. As a man might look back on the well-remembered toys of childhood.
“They are more of our star-brothers,” Catan said quietly. “Do not fear them. They will take you to your homes.”
Martin Ashley started. Everything was happening so fast that he could not organize his thoughts. He had given up the Earth as forever beyond his reach, and now suddenly Catan spoke of home. Ashley felt conflicting emotions chase themselves through his brain, and he tried desperately to say something—something for which he knew no words, in any language. He felt that he had caught a glimpse, a mere suggestion, of something fine—and now it was to be taken from him, and he was free to go home.
He said nothing, because he did not know how. Bob Chavez, too, was silent at his side.
“We will miss you, Martin,” Rondol said. “You are a good man.”
And then the girl, Lirad, was before him. She was not beautiful by ordinary standards, but her dark hair framed the most sensitive face that Ashley had ever seen—sensitive and at the same time firm with strength and humor. Why had he never noticed her before? Gently, she touched his shoulder with her hand. She looked deep into his eyes, smiled faintly, and said nothing.
So few words, so little time remaining now. But Ashley knew that something had passed between himself and the Nern, something new, something that was his if he could just reach out and grasp it.
Too late.
Two men, crisp and uniformed and efficient, came out of the ship, exchanged friendly greetings with the Nern, and took charge of the two men from Earth. Carefully, they led them through the fields of grass and up into the ship that towered into the heavens.
The sun was gone, and the village, and the pines. Now, again, there were the metals and the machines and the hummings and buzzings and clickings. And the alert faces, the ordered activities, the jokes and the skills of men in uniforms.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” said the captain, speaking to them in the language of the Nern. “Make yourselves at home.”
The cushioned take-off and the smoothly compensating gravity pull told Martin Ashley that here was a ship that made the old Juarez look like a crude experiment, a toy for the Fourth of July.
“Tell them about the wheel!” enthused Bob Chavez, his face alive with pleasure.
Martin Ashley smiled back, still trying to organize his thoughts. It had all happened so quickly—
He knew only that he was in space again, and the Nern were gone.
One “day” later they landed on Carinae V.
They stepped out into an enormous concrete spaceport, the biggest that either of them had ever seen, with green gardens on top of the walls and the towers of a white and gleaming city sparkling in the sun beyond.
“This, I believe, was the planet that had no technology,” Bob Chavez said wryly. “Looks like our initial survey made a slight miscalculation.”
“They did indicate two planets that seemed ecologically O.K., if you’ll remember,” Ashley pointed out. “But they seem to have gotten their decimal point in the wrong place. In fact, they didn’t even have a decimal point.”
It was all very swift and very courteous. A smooth, fast copter picked them up and flashed into the city, depositing them on a tower roof. A silent elevator plunged them down into the depths of the building and let them out on the twenty-fifth floor. The door opened directly into a large office—cool and tasteful, with remarkable paintings on the walls and a window that looked out on a roof garden that was a riot of color.
A man got up quickly from behind a desk and came toward them, hand outstretched in true Earth-fashion. He was a big man, well over six feet tall and weighing an easy two hundred pounds, with unruly brown hair, sloppy clothes, and open, friendly eyes.
“Very happy to have you with us,” he boomed in flawless English, his big voice filling the big room. “Very happy indeed! Smoke? Drink?” He laughed, and his laugh was as big as he was. “Sit down.”
Martin Ashley sat. He was still a little weak, and beginning to feel painfully like a small and rather stupid child. The big man’s personality was like a blow in the face, but Ashley liked the man on sight. To cover his nervousness, he fished out his pipe, took his time loading it, and lit it with a stick match.
“My name is Shek,” the big man said. He shook out a cigarette, and one mystery was solved. It was identical to the one that Ashley had found that night, so long ago, outside the village of the Nern. It puffed into a spark as Shek held it in his fingers, and he promptly hung it miraculously in the corner of his mouth and went on talking. “Name sounds moronic I know, but Martin Ashley is a howl too, or would be if you were me.”
Shek paced the floor, puffing up clouds of smoke which the air conditioner valiantly tried to blow out the window. He had plenty of room to pace in, and he needed it. “Look here,” Shek said, “I know what you guys must be thinking, so let’s get the questions out of the way so we can enjoy ourselves.” He jabbed a big finger at Martin Ashley. “Matter of fact, you already know the answers, if you’d just get up on your hind legs and dredge ’em up.”
Ashley smiled dubiously and concentrated on his pipe.
“I’ll show you,” Shek said. “I’ll ask the questions. One, how come you didn’t pick us up on the Juarez survey?”
Ashley hesitated. “You’re screened, I guess,” he said.
“Of course! Only possible answer. See—you know more than you thought you knew already. Long story, and probably very dull to you, but the upshot of it is that we prefer to contact others instead of having strangers barge in on us all the time.” He slammed his fist into his hand with a resounding whack. “You’ve no idea the creeps there are batting around in space, present company excluded of course. Why, would you believe it, one crummy outfit came down here before we had the screen set up and tried to colonize the joint!”
He boomed his big laugh again, and Martin Ashley felt a bit uncomfortable. That shot ha
d come just a trifle too close to home.
“Yes, sir,” Shek hurricaned on, shooting off words like strings of firecrackers. “Next question: How did we know where you were, and when to pick you up?”
“Well, you could have picked up the message from the Juarez,” suggested Bob Chavez.
“Or the Nern got in touch with you somehow,” Ashley added. He was feeling a little better and essayed a smoke ring that wobbled across the room and out the window.
“Nice smoke ring!” complimented Shek. He blew one himself and beamed proudly. “Both of your answers are right, of course. We picked up the message from the Juarez right away, and we knew you’d be O.K. if you didn’t pull anything stupid. Then Rondol gave us a buzz.”
“How?” asked Ashley, beginning to feel dumb again.
“Usual way,” Shek laughed, still pacing up and down, trailing smoke. “We do a little … ummm … trading with Rondol and the boys, you see, and we have to contact them occasionally. So there’s a good transmitter down there—Rondol’s is in the club house in the middle of the plaza; I don’t guess you got in there.”
Ashley shook his head.
“You’re doing fine,” Shek assured them. “Next question: How about my English? Good, huh?” He grinned boyishly.
“It’s not only good, it’s fantastic,” agreed Ashley. “I guess you got it from Rondol, but I didn’t even know he was learning my language while he was teaching me his.”
Shek inhaled another cigarette. “Sure. Smart cookie, Rondol! He sort of picks things up, you see. Best doctor in the system, too. You gentlemen were lucky.”
“We know.”
“Well,” boomed Shek, “so much for the inevitable questions. I told you that you knew all the answers before we started!”
Knew all the answers? I hardly knew the questions!
“Here’s the deal,” Shek told them. His idiomatic English was so absolutely flawless that it was hard to believe that it was not his native tongue. And he had learned it in a few short months. Martin Ashley was almost beyond amazement. If Shek had suddenly sprouted wheels and roared off down the hallway, he probably wouldn’t have flicked an eyelid. “We’ve got a ship going to Centauri the day after tomorrow,” Shek said. “We’ve made it a point so far to avoid Earth shipping, but that’s your ride home. We’ll leave you there and you’ll be picked up in a matter of a few days, I would imagine. Lot of traffic out that way.”
“Home,” said Bob Chavez slowly. “I’m really going home.”
Martin Ashley smoked his pipe and said nothing.
The interview, if such it could properly be called, wore on until long afternoon shadows began to filter down into the vast canyons between the white towers. Martin Ashley felt himself gradually relaxing. The big man was a comfortable sort to be around; he was one of the few men of his type that Ashley had known who was neither a phony nor an ass; Shek really was frank and good-natured, and it was a stupid man indeed who failed to catch the glint of sharp intelligence in his eyes.
Martin Ashley relaxed—and that meant that he could think again. It wasn’t a brooding kind of thought that made him perpetually occupied with Big Problems, which were usually far more ridiculous than many of the “little” problems that all people faced just in the course of growing up and staying alive, but rather a keen curiosity that operated almost on a subconscious level, periodically stepping forward to demand his attention. He had been asking questions ever since he learned how to talk, and for better or for worse it was far too late to stop now.
“It’s so astonishing,” Bob Chavez was saying, shaking his head. “All this, I mean. A few hours ago we were in the middle of nowhere, cut off forever from home and people like ourselves, and now here we are—in this fabulous city, comfortable, and with a ticket for home in our pockets.”
Martin Ashley changed the subject; they had, he figured, about wrung that one dry. “How long have you been in contact with the Nern?” he asked slowly.
Shek smiled. “It’s been a long, long time,” he said. “Not just the Nern, but all the other peoples on Carinae Four. We’ve been in contact for thousands of years. You might say that we sort of grew up together.”
Ashley eyed Shek and asked the question that he had been framing for the past fifteen minutes. It wasn’t worded as a question, but he knew that Shek would catch its import. “You have been remarkably restrained and wise,” he suggested, “in not interfering with their culture. I could see no signs at all that you had tried to make it over in your model, and it must have been a powerful temptation—so close to you, and such a large potential market. Your hands-off policy is practically unique for a culture as highly developed as this one.”
Shek laughed his big booming laugh and stuck another cigarette into the corner of his mouth. “Ashley,” he said, “you know better than that. The fact is that they have been remarkably decent to let us go on our own way as best we could.” He shook his head. “Believe me, it would be utterly fantastic for us even to consider fooling around with the Nern culture—that’s a fast short-cut to oblivion.” He stabbed his finger at Ashley. “We’re not trying to teach them anything—we’re trying to learn!”
Martin Ashley smiled with a certain inner satisfaction.
He had known the answer to that question in advance, too.
VI
It was the next evening, and the lifting of the ship for far Centauri was only fifteen hours away.
Martin Ashley had left Bob Chavez at the spaceport and had more or less invited himself out to Shek’s country home. It hadn’t been very difficult, actually, since the two men had taken an immediate liking to each other.
It was a charming home, set in a landscaped square of grass and flowers. Shek’s wife was just the opposite of her husband, at least on the surface—she was cool, poised, and unobtrusive. The couple had two small children, both girls, who proceeded to chase each other around the living room until they were made to go stand in the corner by their mother. Ashley was vastly amused by the punishment meted out to them—it seemed that methods of disciplining children didn’t change very much even across the gulf of light-years.
Only Shek could speak English, of course, so Ashley had to let smiles and nods do his talking for him. He had a tall cool drink in his hand, which Shek had made with more care than Ashley ever expended on his own drinks, and he experienced a curious duality of feeling that he had known many times before. At once, he was both an outsider and a family friend. He liked it here, and felt that he was liked in return, but somehow he didn’t fit. He was honest with himself about it: he envied Shek his life, and yet he knew that he could never live that way.
“Shek,” he said finally, “there’s some information I’ve got to have, and I’ve come to you to get it. I’ve very little time left now, and I want you to help me fit some pieces together.”
“I’ll try,” Shek agreed readily. The big man was more subdued in his home than he was in his office, and his thoughtful side was much more in evidence. “Shoot.”
Martin Ashley sipped his drink, which was delicious. “Ever since I left the Juarez and headed down for Carinae Four,” he said, “I’ve been sniffing around like an ape at a power generator. I knew there was something utterly out of the ordinary about that planet from the very first, but that’s no answer—it’s just a problem. I saw right away that the Nern were not so simple as they seemed, and I tried to act always on the assumption that they were not primitive, no matter how they looked on the outside. I knew I was right, and you confirmed that for me yesterday when you told us, in effect, that they were way ahead of you, just as you are way ahead of us—”
Shek raised his hand, objecting. “Let’s just say different,” he said. “Or more complex along certain lines. This business of being ’advanced’ is a pretty subjective thing, in my opinion.”
“Correction noted,” agreed Ashley readily. “But we won’t try to solve that particular problem tonight. But here’s the point, Shek: I know what the Nern are not and I ha
ve for a long time. But I don’t know a blessed thing about what they are.” He paused. “Shek, I’ve got to know. Don’t ask me why.”
Shek eyed him carefully. “I guess you do, at that,” he said. “Of course, I can’t pretend to tell you the inside story because I don’t know it all, either. I can give you the general picture, that’s all.”
“That’ll be plenty,” Ashley assured him.
“O.K., Martin. Here, let me fill up your glass again. This will take a little time.”
Martin Ashley leaned forward, hoping that he did not look as excited as he felt.
This was the story Shek told, while the evening shadows marched in steady shadow files on into night.
Man, wherever he is found, is a strange and much misunderstood animal. It was not so much man’s famous “better brain” that made the difference, although he had that, too. Rather, it was his ability to symbolize and thus to be a carrier of culture. The growing totality of culture was passed on from generation to generation, and individuals were born into functioning systems that they themselves had done little or nothing to bring into being.
Each new person did not think up for himself the ideas of cooking food or playing football or using electricity—he just did them “naturally,” because “everybody did it that way.”
Now, culture is a learned process, which must be taught and absorbed, which is why human children are “helpless” for so long and why they must spend almost half of their lives going to school in one form or another.
As cultures developed, a knotty question appeared: What happens when the culture is so complicated that one person can’t possibly learn it all?
Technological processes snowballed whenever they were set in motion, and when technology changed so did the rest of culture. Cultures ballooned—from cave-dwellers to villages to mammoth cities, from stories told around campfires to libraries filled with so many books that it took a special staff just to keep track of them all.
There was too much to learn. What was the solution?
Seven Come Infinity Page 28